THE GOLD SUPPLIER CHECKLIST Quick Guide for the “E Success”

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THE GOLD SUPPLIER CHECKLIST

Quick Guide for the “E-Success”

Mr. Alvaro Galan

Global Asia Corporation Ltd.

Global Asia Corporation LTD. © All Rights Reserved. 2014. Spain.

Logo and screen shots are property of Alibaba.com Hong Kong Limited.

Any unauthorized use of this copyrighted material without the prior written

permission of Global Asia Corporation LTD is strictly prohibited.

A paper written to the

“North America and Europe Suppliers Best Practice Competition”.

Edition 2014-2015

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About The Global Asia Corporation Ltd.

The solvency of years satisfying the most demanding customers of the

worldwide distribution.

Backed by company´s powerful resources, global reach and local depth,

Global Asia Corporation can help clients address their commercial needs by

providing expertise and insights through a single source. We will partner

and guide you toward opportunity, while helping to manage the value,

working together to help build your best turnover. Know more about us.

Global Asia Corporation supports companies and their subsidiaries in their

efforts to develop their businesses in the markets worldwide. It is the one of

the only institution to combine a network in 23 countries with a

comprehensive, innovative range of day-to-day products and services.

In a bid to adapt to a changing environment, the Global Asia Corporation

Group is continuously working on redesigning and creating innovative

products and services to meet the new requirements of organizations and

institutions. It also concentrates on reducing the risks and rationalizing its

structure. It pursues a strategy that focuses on developing integrated

solutions and stimulating productivity gains.

The Global Asia Corporation strategy is based on the development of

integrated solutions as well as the optimization of its productivity. In this,

the Group relies on its business model centered on the client and on its

strong market positioning.

While our scale is impressive, our service is always personal. To have the

closest understanding of their needs, our people live and work side-by-side

in the same geographic areas as our clients. An intimate understanding of

local socio-economic factors provides the intelligence we need to give trusted

advice, anticipate changing needs and deliver workable solutions to suit

different environments and market conditions.

Visit Us: http://globalasia.trustpass.alibaba.com

About the Author

Mr. Alvaro Galan, 29. Spain. Chairman and CEO of the Global Asia

Corporation Holdings. Joined Alibaba in 2012. 2 years Gold Member. It’s

also tutor in a training on the Alibaba´s Seller Channel. Recently listed on

the “Who-is-Who” ranking of the most innovative professionals in Spain.

http://globalasia.trustpass.alibaba.com/

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THE GOLD SUPPLIER CHECKLIST

When I was considering participating in this competition I started thinking

about some of the good practices that we had been running along time. I

couldn´t decide for any of them in particular and finally decided to write

them all in this paper.

So please, consider this guide as a Best Practices Compilation. Most of them

are operational practices and e-Commerce on field experience. All this

knowledge has been collecting almost from the last 18 months and improved

over the time.

Currently the level of deployment covers the entire organization chart, from

purchasing, marketing and sales, to the financial department. Alibaba is the

core sales engine of our online presence. The importance is crucial: Our

sales outside Spain now represents over the 80% of our business.

The impact of the deployment is visible in our day-a-day business. Now we

react in real-time to market demand, and offer customer-specific promotions

and pricing accordingly. We take advantage of customer segmentation

technologies to offer special discounts and pricing for any customer, group of

customers, order, item or geography. We´ve come to the conclusion:

“If that is not working with buyers on Alibaba, probably that won't work with anyone.”

We have also been providing advice and consultancy services for more than

35 companies in the past 6 months, most of them from Europe, which are

considering to joining Alibaba Gold Membership or looking for a better

performance online. They are actually deploying our best practices on their

own organizations.

In fact, the reason of writing this paper is to summarize all the know-how

we have been accumulating along this time in the courses, meetings and

conference calls with our own people and with our customers.

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INDEX

1. Hey! Am on the right place?

2. Understanding the buyer´s needs

3. Setting Up your Store – Love at first sight

4. Beyond the Screen – Is your company following you?

5. Tracking your Performance

6. Security Matters

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1. Hey! Am on the right place?

Although B2B e-Commerce doesn’t garner the same buzz and attention of

its B2C counterpart, already accounts for more revenue: $559B vs. $252B.

[Forrester. 2014] And is growing faster, as well: 20% in 2013 vs. 12% for

B2C. What’s fueling this growth? The expectations of B2B buyers.

If you are here is because you are one-in-a-thousand of the businessman/

businesswoman with both vision and ambition; and you are already a Gold

Member in Alibaba or you are planning to subscribe it soon.

If you still being an unverified member, please check the differences

between Registered Members vs Gold Members, here and convince yourself.

Don´t miss the chance to join us and bring your business to the next level.

It’s important to set appropriate expectations when you are considering

joining Alibaba and most of the people ask me about the same: the positive

Return on Investment (ROI).

The answer is always the same: Absolutely.

With one condition: I am assuming that you are not going to subscribe the

Gold Membership and go to bed waiting the money comes.

Even doing everything perfect you cannot think your sales will boost in the

first year, Wake Up!

…But you'll be on track to achieve it.

If someone asked me why we love Alibaba as B2B e-Commerce Platform I

would say:

• Because of the Inquiries & Leads

• Because of the Networking

• Because of the Trade & Analysis Tools

• Because of the Business Insights

• Because of the Security

• Because of the Alibaba´s Sales and Customer Service

More & More

Please don´t miss the chance to review all the fantastic materials of the

Alibaba´s Learning Center, here and Alibaba´s Training Center, here.

A couple of months ago and with the staff of Alibaba we recorded a tutorial

called “Boost Your Sales in Alibaba” which is available here. There´s also a

Spanish version: “Incrementa tus ventas en Alibaba”, here.

http://seller.alibaba.com/memberships/index.html?tracelog=seller_channel_member_hp_header

http://seller.alibaba.com/learningcenter?tracelog=seller_channel_lc_hp_header

http://seller.alibaba.com/training.htm?tracelog=seller_channel_training_hp_header

http://seller.alibaba.com/training/vodCourseDetail.htm?courseId=309100006

http://seller.alibaba.com/training/vodCourseDetail.htm?courseId=309700000

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2. Understanding the buyer´s needs

There are 26 million of registered members in Alibaba worldwide (and

growing) and 23 million of them are buyers.

1. Those buyers are visiting your online store 24 hours a day, 7 days a

week; from more than 190 different countries. Your site is accessible

every time from everywhere.

2. Demanding excellent products and premium customer service, if

possible in the same language, using their own currency, metric

system, payment terms or business uses and traditions…

3. Sending more than 10k product quotations every day and 100k

messages and inquiries.

Imagine that your physical store or office receive customers with the same

profile and the implications of that in your business. The ability to adapt

your business depending the customer profile is the best strength to succeed

internationally.

Your customers also have expectations of your site:

Find what they are looking for (70% of site activity is focused on the

process of finding information).

Take some action on what they find, for example, request a quotation.

Receive a quick and satisfactory reply.

A recent survey conducted by Alibaba shown important information about

what the buyers are expecting in their website experience and which are the

aspects they more valued in a supplier. Below a brief description of each of

them:

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The Product

The 89% of the buyers answered that the most important aspect when

sourcing is the product. Posting complete and accurate content educates

customers, builds trust and helps improve their perception of your brand.

But when your product data is incomplete, inconsistent or hard-to-find in

your B2B eCommerce sites, time-starved customers simply go elsewhere to

satisfy their needs, resulting in lost sales and trust.

The Pricing

We won´t discuss in this paper the different marketing strategies to follow

in Alibaba regarding the pricing. Within B2B pricing is complex, order

values are often greater, and the number of orders per customer is often

larger, as are the quantities. Strongly recommended qualifying the customer

and the lead first, and then talk about the price.

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The Customer Service

Although B2B e-Commerce is convenient for customers, it carries more

perceived risk than traditional sourcing. Since a buyer can not touch the

product or immediately discuss the product face-to-face with a salesperson,

he or she feels more pressure at every stage of the buyer's cycle.

Having a fantastic website doesn´t mean neglecting one of your greatest

assets: the human interaction. Is crucial a timely response to the inquiries

and be online to chat using TradeManager.

The Logistics and the Company Image

There really much to say about the need of a good logistics department or

carrier agency who help us to deliver the product to the customer, quickly,

safely and saving costs, but is out of the scope of this paper.

The next chapter describes in detail the key factors about designing your

online store, a critical issue to build the online image of your company.

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3. Setting Up your Store – Love at first sight

E-Commerce is not limited to a digital payment gateway where transactions

are issued. It's a whole shopping experience. In the B2B segment, it is

important to know the needs of the customers to configure an appropriate

website for them. Below you will find listed the elements to consider when

designing and maintaining your site on Alibaba. It is always a good idea to

take a look at the websites of other suppliers, even of the same sector or

industry.

The Home Page

Your home page is one of the most important pages on your website to get

right. Not only is it your ‘shop window’ it is also a high footfall area. The

design tools on Alibaba are very complete and allow enough flexibility to

configure the structure and functionality of the homepage. Include hot sales

or recommended sections to display your main or latest products.

Clear Navigation and product categories

Browsing is a core user activity on the home page. So your site navigation

menu should be simple enough to be clear to the user, yet allow them a more

comprehensive choice of browsing than top-level categories alone.

On-Site Search

For B2B, on-site search is even more important. Your products are very

complex with lots of detail, specifications, attributes and variants. And you

may have a significant product views increase.

Slideshows

The Gold Members in Alibaba are able to include two products in its

Homepage Showcase. These products have a great visibility for customers

and it is important to deploy and use them correctly. In the “Track your

Performance” section you will see a practical example.

Use consistent, high quality photography

A picture tells a thousand words and more so when it comes to the product

page. Let’s get this straight. The image on your product page is the hero of

your movie. Having beautiful photography doesn’t mean you need to hire a

really expensive photographer, but it does mean a time investment in

capturing the right photos of your various products or services to help

people to look through your offerings and buy.

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SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

I really think I need to write a paper exclusively discussing about the SEO

in Alibaba. Next time. You have to think that Alibaba is not only a huge e-

Commerce platform, is also an engine for indexing and search, that helps

customers to find what they are looking for. In order to help the buyers to

find your product, it is important to take care of the name you assign to it,

at the time of publishing, because that will impact the indexing engine and

therefore, in the number of visitors you will receive.

Visible Contact Information

Posting contact information in visible places can go a long way in

establishing credibility and providing a pleasant shopping experience.

Customers will have problems and questions during the buying process and

being there for them is a huge usability plus.

Reserve your own company URL

The Gold Members in Alibaba are able to reserve their own URL name. It is

extraordinary important for the store SEO. For example, in our case we

changed our initial URL http://es1043486173.trustpass.alibaba.com for this

one: http://globalasia.trustpass.alibaba.com . Take a look on “Company &

Website” > “Change My Website Address”.

Regular Audit your own site

It is important that you eventually visit your own website as a customer

does, from different devices if possible. Check whether the images are

properly displayed and the definition is good and if the page takes a long

time to load.

http://es1043486173.trustpass.alibaba.com/

http://globalasia.trustpass.alibaba.com/

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4. Beyond the Screen – Is your company following you?

The things we do online have an impact on our business. And sometimes the

company must adapt itself to become more competitive online. The company

must be prepared for international business before jumping overseas.

Delegating into the right people

We´ve created a new role inside the company, the eCommerce Manager,

reporting directly to the Group Sales Manager. This resource is a full time

employee dedicated to attending the Alibaba site and the TradeManager

tool. It’s also in charge of the reporting and the coordination of the

marketing agency which is producing the banners, brochures and other

online resources.

It’s important to note that is a position with a high responsibility, because is

the online face of the company and in charge to cause an extraordinary first

impression to the customers.

We thought that it would be a good idea to share in this paper all the details

of the position, which was used at the recruitment stage and actually

deployed. Even if you want to do it without hiring a dedicated person, this

information will be useful to know the tasks you have to perform and the

basic knowledge.

Responsibilities:

• Leadership for Group eCommerce, including practices in product

presence, demand generation and analytics utilized to improve the

sales of the Group.

• Work closely with cross functional teams, including sales and channel

teams to identify eCommerce opportunities.

• Follow identified best-practices and processes to improve product

presence on eCommerce websites. This includes actively consulting

and supporting the business team as they execute on account

negotiations, SKU presence improvements, product detail page

improvements, images, videos and rich content and other requisite

best-practices to reach eCommerce sales goals.

• Work closely with the marketing agency to identify best practices and

processes to manage data and assets for eCommerce programs.

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• Partner with the business unit teams to define objectives in

eCommerce, including product content, product positioning, website

advertising and demand generation programs, channel strategy and

competitive response.

Basic Qualifications of the candidate:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher from an accredited university.

• Minimum of three (3) or more years of eCommerce experience.

• Minimum of five (5) or more years combined experience in key

account management, sales planning, account development,

marketing and/or business development.

• Understanding of consumer/shopper experience as it relates to online

shopping and as it contrasts with brick-and-mortar shopping.

• Ability to drive strategy and change while implementing, analyzing

and reporting on numerous concurrent eCommerce projects.

• Superior analytical skills and experience applying data to make

decisions. Record of making decisions and implementing change.

• Project management experience with demonstrated ability to

prioritize work independently and manage multiple tasks.

• Fluent English and Spanish, both written and spoken.

Delivering the information to the decision makers

As a part of our online strategy we also decided to set-up some tools and

practices:

• Create a Cloud-Based folder, accessible for everyone and from

everywhere, where all the staff can share ideas and experiences; it’s

an open forum to discuss and propose alternative ways to bring our

customers new products and to learn about our own mistakes and

success. The information contained in that folder is the raw material

of this paper.

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• Providing the key people with mobile devices.

• Integrate the e-Commerce with all back-office technologies, specially

the ERP and the CRM.

• We use customer segmentation to offer customer-specific promotions

and incentives as a way to drive volume, increase conversion rates,

boost average order value, reward loyalty, and even clear out

inventory.

• Maintain real-time inventory levels and pricing accuracy to ensure

our business is always on top of shipping, order fulfillment, and

accounting. Inventory control tactics prevent customers from

inadvertently making orders that cannot be fulfilled, and provide

suppliers with insight into exactly what’s going on at their

warehouses and fulfillment centers.

• Weekly reviews of performance and business track of Alibaba. The

Ecommerce Manager prepares and sends a report to the board of

directors the last Friday of the month. Deciding the new products to

include and to take offline. Deciding the products to display in the

showcase depending the market trends.

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5. Tracking your Perfomance

It’s important to know if all the work your company is doing in Alibaba

worth for something. For sure you always can track the sales performance,

but it’s important to know from where the sales are coming: An unexpected

sales boost in a region? More inquiries from a specific product? Visitors from

a country you never export before?...

Is better if you can answer those questions if your boss asks!

Alibaba website essentially penalizes one thing: the inactivity. So no matter

how good your products are, if you are not attending your place or your

customers. That’s because we insist on having dedicated people taking care

of the Alibaba site.

Your trade performance depends on two main factors: how quick you answer

the received messages via Alibaba site and Trademanager chat. Take a look

on “Company & Website” > “Trade Performance”:

One of the most powerful resources you will find in the Alibaba dashboard is

the Data Visualization tool. The primary goal of DV is to communicate information clearly and efficiently to users via the information graphics selected, such as tables and charts. Effective visualization helps users in analyzing and reasoning about data and evidence. It makes complex data more accessible, understandable and usable [Wikipedia. 2014].

If you want to start analyzing, click on “Biz Trends”:

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Biz Trends will provide a better understand buyers' behavior, maximize

your return-on –investment and get valuable feedback on your performance

and operation. So your first step should be the “Advisor Overview”, a great

summary of your overall performance and the basic tips to improve your

ratios:

One of the better things of the information displayed here, is that you are

able to compare your company´s performance with the industry and top

suppliers performance, so you can actually know how is your company

positioned in the market.

A deeper insight of your website performance; click on “Biz Trends” > “My

Performance” > “My Minisite”:

Useful tips I use to recommend:

Check your performance once a week.

Display your response rate.

Reply every single email within 48 hours.

Install TradeManger both in your PC and Smartphone and try to

answer immediately (within 1 hour) to the messages received in

TradeManager.

Don´t forget to check the “Credibility Record”.

Use the “Hot Keywords” to identify how you can better reach your

customers.

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Try hard to meet the criteria of the “Quotation Express” and gain

access to the “Golden Bridge” to your customers.

Post someday a RFQ (Request for quotation) in Alibaba for a better

understanding of how your responses usually look like. We have

nicknamed this as “E.B.Y.O.C.”: Experience to Be Your Own

Customer.

Below an important graph. Take a look of the evolution of the total views, of

a product displayed on the Showcase:

In July we decided to remove the product and substitute it for another. The

visibility of a product in the showcase is extraordinary: from 6500 views to

barely 500, in just 3 months! See how important is to take correct decision

based on the appropriate analysis.

One of the things I use to recommend is the A/B Testing. A/B testing is the

process of testing two different versions of the same web page to see which

features are the most appealing to your web visitors. And works really well.

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6. Security Matters

This summer we had a very serious problem. It was a nightmare. A person

contacts me asking, like many others, by one of our products.

The truth is that I was not cautious enough. I sent an email with full details

of the company and my contact, and never got a reply from the buyer.

A week later my phone rang. Rang every 5 minutes. I was getting calls from

suppliers around the world:

"Hey! Thanks for contacting us and you interest in our ladies lingerie." - Someone said.

“Whaaaat???? “- I Said.

“Well, that´s what you told us in your email, Mr. Mambuto”.

After two hours receiving calls, one of the suppliers, fortunately another

Gold Member in Alibaba, sent me the email he received. It was exactly the

same I received weeks before, but in that email the phone number of Mr

Mambuto, was mine!!!

The spammer happily decided to send thousands of emails using my phone

on the signature.

That caused a significant harm in my day-a-day and for the business. For

one month I stopped to answer phone calls from unknown numbers,

probably from honest suppliers trying to do business, but misled by the

spammer.

The 99% of people doing business in Alibaba are reliable people, but what

can we do with the other 1%? Here some tips:

Change your account password and the password of the email

associated to your account monthly.

NEVER introduce your email information in unknown websites, even

if the buyer said the purchase order is waiting for you after log-in.

NEVER open compressed files containing .exe archives.

Report Spam and suspicious emails directly from the Inbox.

Report non-acceptable behaviors to the Alibaba´s Customer Service.

Remember Sign-Out every time you’re not using the Site.

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Register your phone for get validation codes when log-in.

Confirm with the customer in the first contact the following information:

• Company Name

• Company Address

• Contact Information

• Name and Position of the Person in Charge

A serious buyer won´t have any problem to give that information. If you still

thinking the information provided is not enough, you can conduct a deeper

Due Diligence process.

5 Steps of preliminary due diligence:

o Business License

o Company Chop

o Mandatory Certificates/ Licenses

o Financial Status

o Company operations

Personal visit and keep continuous contact.

Do not rush!

Ideally have a trusted person in the spot.

Local professional advice.

The Delinquent´s Glossary

Scamming: A confidence trick (synonyms include confidence scheme,

scam and stratagem) is an attempt to defraud a person or group after

first gaining their confidence, used in the classical sense of trust.

Confidence tricks exploit characteristics of the human psyche such as

dishonesty, honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,

naïveté and greed. [Wikipedia. 2014].

Below some of the situations you will probably face sooner or later:

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Spoofing: In the context of network security, a spoofing attack is a

situation in which one person or program successfully masquerades

as another by falsifying data and thereby gaining an illegitimate

advantage. [Wikipedia. 2014]. For example, receiving emails on

behalf of Alibaba which are actually sent by spammers.

They are working hard to make you believe that they are acting on

behalf of Alibaba´s account members as you can see below:

Thanks!

THE GOLD SUPPLIER CHECKLIST Quick Guide for the “E Success”

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